But it’s always good to see the now 70-year-old reverting back to the gangster /crime genre.

Here, he’s the head of a notorious Mafia clan relocating to Normandy and watched over by the FBI’s Robert Stansfield (an underused Tommy Lee Jones).

Once they were the Manzonis of Brooklyn, now they’re the Blakes – Fred (Robert De Niro), wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer, ageing gracefully) and adolescent children Belle (17) and Warren (14).

Fred – real name Giovanni – has been on the run since compromising fellow mobster Don Luchese, who will inevitably turn up looking for trouble.

De Niro’s deadpan humour suits a garden burial perfectly, but we just don’t see enough of how we really want him to be.

Based on a book by Tonino Benacquista, opening like an edgy revision of Meet the Parents (2000) and often rather fun, the plot soon frays beyond lines like ‘knowing how much you are worth is like knowing the day you are going to die’.

While Fred is busy typing up his life story – “It’s good for me to write the truth, I’ve got know who I am” – Maggie visits the local priest and the kids take this much closer to Mean Girls than Mean Streets.

French director Luc Besson (Léon) has made a career out of a willingness to experiment but The Family’s tonal variations jar.